Analyzing the Impact of Ransomware on the Revenue Cycle: A Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of ransomware attacks on the revenue cycle of Motherboards and More Pty Ltd, an Australia-based organization. It examines the company's revenue cycle, identifies vulnerabilities, and discusses the impact of weaknesses like credit sales, dock-based shipments, lack of a database, and discount policies. The report delves into the nature of ransomware attacks, control measures, and preventive strategies such as data backups, security software, and patch applications. The study concludes with recommendations for strengthening the organization's defenses against cyber threats and ensuring business continuity. The report also discusses the working principles and effects of ransomware attacks.

Running head: IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
Impact of ransomware on revenue cycle
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note

1IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
Executive Summary
This report mainly focuses on the various threats of ransomware on the revenue system of an
organization. For this report the chosen organization is Motherboard and More Pty Ltd. The
report mainly discusses the risk mitigation process related to such ransomware attacks. The
analysis of ransomware attack is done, its working principle, it effect has been discussed in the
forthcoming pages of this report in a proper way. Measures to control the ransomware attack like
backing up of important data, adopting security measures, appliance of security patches has also
been discussed below.

2IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.............................................................................................................1
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Discussion............................................................................................................................4
Overview of revenue cycle..............................................................................................4
Identification of weakness...................................................................................................4
Weakness.........................................................................................................................4
Impact of these weaknesses.............................................................................................5
Control.............................................................................................................................6
Overview of ransomware attack..........................................................................................7
Control to ransomware attack..............................................................................................7
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................8
References..........................................................................................................................10

3IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
Introduction
The recent attacks of the ransomware attacks on the organization revenue system of the
world is the main topic of discussion of this report. The company chosen is the Motherboards
and More Pty Ltd. the report has a main focus on the analysis off threats and respective solutions
of the problems. The report also provides a discussion of the ransomware attacks, its effects and
preventive measures (Andronio, Zanero & Maggi, 2015).
Discussion
Motherboards and More Pty Ltd is considered as a medium size organization which is
exclusive which is an Australia based firm. The company mainly focuses on the production of
computer microchips, motherboards and graphics card. In addition to the manufacturing above
products the company is considered to be key computer producers and it repairs all the system
that are based in Australia. Motherboards and More Pty is running business for more than 8 years
and it has an incorporated framework of ERP (Song, Kim & Lee, 2016).
Overview of revenue cycle
The firm receives the notice of different order for their customer by using telephones or
Email which can be placed on the website of this company. The received order can be easily sent
to dock which is mainly used for receiving both the incoming and outgoing orders of shipment.
However, the increased sales created a negative impact like delay shipment or wrong shipment
of products to their customers and it also fail to keep a track on the records of return products
(Song, Kim & Lee, 2016).

4IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
Figure 1: Level 0 Data Flow Diagram
(Source: Created by Author)

5IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
Identification of weakness
This portion mainly discussion about the methods of controlling the weakness and their
effect on the revenue cycle of the given organization. In addition to the above-mentioned
problems it also states the possible solution of the weakness (Song, Kim & Lee, 2016).
Impact of these weaknesses
The first weakness of this organization it that it allows the purchase of various goods on
credit which directly means that the company is providing the product as a 30 days’ trial to its
customers. This will ultimately hamper the sales operation team in the first month of operation of
each product that is being delivered (Pathak & Nanded, 2016).
The second weakness is the usage of docks for delivering of products and the operation
involved are placing of goods in a sequential way to promote easy transport of goods (Pathak &
Nanded, 2016).
Absence of another database is another weakness because all the firms need a database
for maintaining a track of records of incoming and outgoing products (O'Gorman & McDonald,
2012).
In addition to the above-mentioned problems the discount of 2% will reduce profit as it
recorded from the revenue cycle that large number of customers opt for 2% discount in return
products (O'Gorman & McDonald, 2012).
Control
The firm needs to reduce its credit value as it directly effects the organization. The
customers with good credit score are not given credit to maintain its current position in the
market (O'Gorman & McDonald, 2012).

6IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
Internal control weaknesses Impact Mitigation (Solutions to
overcome problem)
Purchase of products on
credits
Hindrance in sales operation
for the first month
Checking of credit scores of
customers before letting out
products
Shipment of product using
the same dock
Losing of count during high
sales activity
Tracking of delivery services
by using software solution
Absence of a database Unable to keep records of
different goods.
Application of a database
solution
High discount in return Customers always opting for
this method leading to less
profit
Needs to apply alternative
solutions
Overview of ransomware attack
Ransomware attack is considered as the biggest of all cyber-attacks that spread round the
whole world. The process mainly involves encryption of files which contain important
information and data and thereby preventing its access to them (Kharraz et al., 2015). The
infected systems display a message of attack with a demand in payment of 300 dollars to the
attackers. The demanded money needs to be deposited in bitcoins whose address was mentioned
in the display message (Kharraz et al., 2015).
Control to ransomware attack
The ransomware attack is considered as the biggest cyber-attack that affected more than
99 countries. The firm needs to check the presence of security by using various antivirus

7IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
programs in their systems. The antivirus programs are very useful in checking the presence of
any malware or security in their system. Some of the common used antivirus program are
Kaspersky and Quick Heal (Faruki et al., 2012).
Backing up of important data containing information must be promoted which mainly
helps in building a secure system during any disaster that may take place in the firm. In many
disaster cases, the organization can easily resume their operation without facing any issues
(Faruki et al., 2012)
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the organization needs to check the
recommendation provided to it in the recommendation part of the report. This will help the
organization to apply certain operations so they effective and useful to organization which are
mainly ensured in the business. The analysis of ransomware attack is done, its working principle,
it effect has been discussed above properly. Measures to control the ransomware attack like
backing up of important data, adopting security measures, appliance of security patches has also
been discussed.

8IMPACT OF RANSOMWARE ON REVENUE CYCLE
References
Andronio, N., Zanero, S., & Maggi, F. (2015, November). Heldroid: Dissecting and detecting
mobile ransomware. In International Workshop on Recent Advances in Intrusion
Detection (pp. 382-404). Springer International Publishing.
Everett, C. (2016). Ransomware: to pay or not to pay? Computer Fraud & Security, 2016(4), 8-
12.
Faruki, P., Laxmi, V., Gaur, M. S., & Vinod, P. (2012, October). Mining control flow graph as
API call-grams to detect portable executable malware. In Proceedings of the Fifth
International Conference on Security of Information and Networks (pp. 130-137). ACM.
Kharraz, A., Robertson, W., Balzarotti, D., Bilge, L., & Kirda, E. (2015, July). Cutting the
gordian knot: A look under the hood of ransomware attacks. In International Conference
on Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment (pp. 3-24).
Springer, Cham.
Mercaldo, F., Nardone, V., Santone, A., & Visaggio, C. A. (2016, June). Ransomware steals
your phone. formal methods rescue it. In International Conference on Formal Techniques
for Distributed Objects, Components, and Systems (pp. 212-221). Springer, Cham.
O'Gorman, G., & McDonald, G. (2012). Ransomware: A growing menace. Symantec
Corporation.
Pathak, D. P., & Nanded, Y. M. (2016). A dangerous trend of cybercrime: ransomware growing
challenge. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering &
Technology (IJARCET) Volume, 5.
Song, S., Kim, B., & Lee, S. (2016). The effective ransomware prevention technique using
process monitoring on android platform. Mobile Information Systems, 2016.

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